A “slab of moisture” will bring widespread heavy rain to coastal NSW including Sydney over the next week, with localised falls topping 200 millimetres and even minor to major flooding.
The Bureau of Meteorology said a low-pressure trough off south-east Queensland and the north-east NSW coast will start to bring rain to those regions from Wednesday and those falls should then move southwards.
Mike Funnell, the bureau’s manager of weather services in NSW, said rainfall totals would be determined by the location of the trough, and some regions could collect 50 to 100 millimetres per day.
Wednesday was “still hit and miss” but there would be higher totals as the system moved south, he said. “We could see a moderate or even major flood potential.”
Ben Domensino, a meteorologist at Weatherzone, said a “slab of moisture” was moving in from the east, and this would combine with upper-level cold air moving in to create instability. Rainfall levels and also winds would likely increase if the trough spawned several low-pressure systems and they lingered along the coast.
“Definitely some areas will get more than 100 millimetres between now and early next week,” Mr Domensino said. “We haven’t had a weather event like this for at least a year.”
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